SOURCE: "The Near Tragic," in The Commonweal Vol. LXXI, No. 1, October 2, 1959, pp. 28-9.

In the following review of Short Stories, Seldin identifies qualities that distinguish Pirandello's successful short fiction from his weaker stories.

Most volumes of short stories involve for the reviewer a built-in hazard in that space forbids the particular comment and justice the general. However, these twenty-two stories [in Short Stories by Pirandello] mitigate the difficulty because Pirandello's preoccupation in them, as in his plays and novels, is remarkably constant. Human experience, as he saw it, is at best ironic, at worst not quite tragic, but rather frustrating. For men, who need to communicate, are unheard, misunderstood or, when grasped a little too well, made vulnerable to those who wish them ill.

The stories gain their force from the fact that the anguish their characters endure comes through human acts, willed acts proceeding from motives not...